Asbestos Exposure – A Deadly Result

Asbestos is a well-known human carcinogen. Exposure to asbestos may increase the risk of mesothelioma, a relatively rare cancer of the thin membranes that line the chest and abdomen.

Through a combination of second-generation sequencing and cutting-edge bioinformatics approaches, a large deletion was found within the DPP10 (di-peptidyl peptidase) gene. This deletion results in reduced expression of DPP10 and is associated with poor patient survival.

DPP10 encodes a type II transmembrane protein that is known to modulate potassium channels and alter their expression and biophysical properties. It may influence tumour cell survival or growth, as potassium channels are known to play important roles in regulating cell proliferation, cell cycle progression and apoptosis.

The deletion within the region on DPP10 can be observed using our SynaSV application. SynaSV is an online tool specifically designed to visualise and classify structural variations. This application can be used to analyse both single and paired-end reads.

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The alignment results show that the query sequence has the longest and highest ranking alignment to chromosome 2. Click on the check box beside it and a structural variation viewer will appear.

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From the viewer it can be seen that there is a gap of around 400,000 base pairs between the query and its position on chromosome 2.

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Below the viewer you can see a results table which indicates the type of structural variation as well as various statistics related to the alignment.

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